Drive 55, try to stay alive!

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This is soooooo not about urban development but I think this article is great.

Everyone and anyone who drives on I-285...off peak hours of course....knows that driving the speed limit can be harzardous to your health. Well several local college students put this theory to the test by driving 55 miles per hour on I-285. They have even made a film about it.

They knew it was dangerous.

"We could have really been hurt," said one of the Atlanta college students after their experiment.

"I was pretty sure that I was doing something stupid," said another.

That may be true. But, young and brash, they had a plan.

They wanted to go the speed limit on I-285.

In four cars, on all four lanes, the students from Georgia State University and other local colleges paced the entire midmorning flow of Perimeter traffic behind them at 55 mph for half an hour. They call it "an act of civil obedience."

"I get a lot of tickets," said Andy Medlin, 20, the Georgia State student who came up with the idea. "The best way to expose the flaws in the system is by following it."

Thankfully, they survived unharmed, though much maligned. The eight students captured it all on video for a student film competition, and the five-minute piece has fired up the country this week on blogs, talk radio, and national news broadcasts.

Please, if you can, view the video of this project. They were daring and it shows how driving 55 can almost get you killed.

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hmm, from the looks of it if everyone went 55, would traffic be so bad? Not if you were getting on the on ramp in front of these people!!!! rofl. Wish I were still @ GSU so I could shake these ppls hands!

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In four cars, on all four lanes, the students from Georgia State University and other local colleges paced the entire midmorning flow of Perimeter traffic behind them at 55 mph for half an hour. They call it "an act of civil obedience."

I dont have any problem with driving the speed limit. However, in where i have it bold, they decideded to also block the passing lane. The study would of been fine if the passing lane was not being blocked. Whatever happend to common sense?

Passing lane = left lane

David Spear, a spokesman for the state Department of Transportation, said if the students weren't blocking emergency vehicles and were going the speed limit, "they didn't do a thing wrong."

Luckly, there are left & right shoulders along the Perimeter for emergency vehicles to pass the idiot who blocked the left lane. What if there wasent, did they still do nothing wrong? If this was done in any another country, the police would of ticketed the left lane driver but of course in this country we would not do it. Law enforcement is too busy making money going on a ticket blitz.

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Luckly, there are left & right shoulders along the Perimeter for emergency vehicles to pass the idiot who blocked the left lane. What if there wasent, did they still do nothing wrong? If this was done in any another country, the police would of ticketed the left lane driver but of course in this country we would not do it. Law enforcement is too busy making money going on a ticket blitz.

You can't ticket someone if they haven't broken the law. None of them were doing over the speed limit. If an emergency vehicle pulled up behind them then yes they would have had to move or be ticketed.

This story is just histerical.

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You can't ticket someone if they haven't broken the law. None of them were doing over the speed limit. If an emergency vehicle pulled up behind them then yes they would have had to move or be ticketed.

This story is just histerical.

Do you understand this just decreases the driving standards? You dont drive the left lane as a travel lane, that is illegal. You use it to pass slower vehicles regardless of the speed limit. For ALL of those vehicles crawling along the perimeter behind the lead left lane vehicle who decided to drive it for a half hour, a life could of been saved if the left lane would of been cleared up for emergency vehicles to rush through the perimeter to rescue someone or get to the nearest hospital. Every second counts

You must be a left lane driver then, im sorry.

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Do you understand this just decreases the driving standards? You dont drive the left lane as a travel lane, that is illegal. You use it to pass slower vehicles regardless of the speed limit. For ALL of those vehicles crawling along the perimeter behind the lead left lane vehicle who decided to drive it for a half hour, a life could of been saved if the left lane would of been cleared up for emergency vehicles to rush through the perimeter to rescue someone or get to the nearest hospital. Every second counts

You must be a left lane driver then, im sorry.

Relax, Jerseyman. I would have been just as pissed off as you had I been stuck behind these 4. I do 80 on I-285 just to keep up with the flow and usually I'm not in the left lane. My point is that they did not break any laws by driving 55. Were they incensitive? Of course. But was it illegal? No.

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Relax, Jerseyman. I would have been just as pissed off as you had I been stuck behind these 4. I do 80 on I-285 just to keep up with the flow and usually I'm not in the left lane. My point is that they did not break any laws by driving 55. Were they incensitive? Of course. But was it illegal? No.

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Jerseyman, nobody is saying that people should drive 55 in every lane, all the time. In fact, you're just highlighting another flaw in the system that they're showing off -- even the law realizes that 55 mph is not realistic as a legal speed limit, nor is it reflective of how people drive.

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Relax, Jerseyman. I would have been just as pissed off as you had I been stuck behind these 4. I do 80 on I-285 just to keep up with the flow and usually I'm not in the left lane. My point is that they did not break any laws by driving 55. Were they incensitive? Of course. But was it illegal? No.

I don't think we 55 mph-ers are inconsiderate at all. To the contrary, the people who are breaking the speed limit are the ones being inconsiderate, in my opinion. Why should my life be endangered because someone else got up too late or is impatient to get to the mall?

Frankly, I doubt that the speed demons are getting to their destination much faster than us law-abiding drivers anyway.

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Frankly, I doubt that the speed demons are getting to their destination much faster than us law-abiding drivers anyway.

No they probably aren't. But if you think that driving 55 miles per hour on I-285 is safe, then you could be the one causing an accident.

You are right, driving over 55 miles per hour is against the law on I-285, but I wouldn't want to be that car that only drives 55 and gets smashed from behind simply because I didn't want to break the speed limit.

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No they probably aren't. But if you think that driving 55 miles per hour on I-285 is safe, then you could be the one causing an accident.

Isn't that like saying the guy who gets shot by a criminal is the one causing the shooting? What's the problem with people simply slowing down?

Since we acknowledge that speed demons really aren't getting to their destination any faster, what's the justification for their impatience and self-centered recklessness?

Maybe it would be better if people didn't choose lifestyles that put them so far from where they work, shop, play, and attend school that they are literally spending a day or two each week in traffic? I think that's a big part of what leads to speeding and similar aggressive driving habits.

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Jerseyman, nobody is saying that people should drive 55 in every lane, all the time. In fact, you're just highlighting another flaw in the system that they're showing off -- even the law realizes that 55 mph is not realistic as a legal speed limit, nor is it reflective of how people drive.

I think this whole thing is a pretty cool idea, but if it actually did expose an "flaws in the system" it wasn't of the DOT nature. Instead it exposed the flaws of human nature.

I majored in civil engineering and one thing they teach you in road design is to design the road for 10 mph over the posted speed limit. So if 285 has a posted speed limit of 55 mph, then you could safely travel on the road at 65 mph. Anything over that would be deemed too fast for the road, i.e. the severity of horizontal and vertical curves, superelevation, sight distance, etc. The idiots who go 80 or 90 mph on 285 have a problem, OK? They are breaking the law. And they are endangering themselves because the road wasn't built for those kinds of speeds. The "flaw in the system" is a flaw of human nature. Not because the speed limit is too low. People just drive too damn fast for their own good. A few years ago the Georgia DOT decided to increase the speed limit on rural interstates from 65 mph to 75 mph, if anyone remembers. But this decision was heavily weighed on safety vs. mobility. If you increase the speed limit of a road to a higher limit than what it was designed for, the road becomes more lethal to drive on and the more people die. They can actually calculate for every mph raised, X amount of people will die. When the DOT made their decision to raise the speed limit, I guess they decided that X amount of people dying each year due to increased speed was worth the added mobility of a faster road. It was a balancing act, in a sick sort of way.

Basically driving over the speed limit makes for more dangerous roads. Combine high speeds with lots of cars and you've got a recipe for disaster. In dense urban areas, such as around the perimeter, you want a lower speed limit because of the huge volume of cars. People already go 80-90 mph on 285. If the speed limit was raised to 75mph, people would be going 120mph, and you'd have many more fatalities. So 55 mph is a good speed for 285. Now, if we just had better police coverage to keep the speeds down to where they should be.

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People already go 80-90 mph on 285. If the speed limit was raised to 75mph, people would be going 120mph, and you'd have many more fatalities.

If the speed limit was 75mph on 285, I'd stick to surface streets. I get people cutting me off when I'm going around 65-70 keeping with the flow, you'd would've to get licensed by NASCAR to travel that route.

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Today, I was driving during rush hour on I-75 northbound in suburban Henry County. I was driving 72 mph, yet I was passed by every single car except one.

People in the Atlanta area drive too fast. I've lived here my entire life, and it seems that the average speeds have definitely increased by a lot over the past ten years. Yet, I've also noticed that you find fewer speed traps in the metro area than you would see about ten years ago.

I wouldn't doubt if the average speed on Atlanta interstates is in the 75-80 mph range. Definitely ridiculous.

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Maybe it would be better if people didn't choose lifestyles that put them so far from where they work, shop, play, and attend school that they are literally spending a day or two each week in traffic? I think that's a big part of what leads to speeding and similar aggressive driving habits.

This would be ideal but its not always possible to live near where you work. Companies move, jobs change. A person can't just move everytime their job changes. Atlanta is an aggresive city when it comes to driving.

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This would be ideal but its not always possible to live near where you work. Companies move, jobs change. A person can't just move everytime their job changes.

Well, we can certainly do better than we've been doing, I think. "Three-fourths of the region's workers commute from homes in the suburbs to jobs in the suburbs, and nearly two-thirds of city residents drive alone to work."Brookings Institution

I've lived in Atlanta for many years, and I've always made conscious decisions about where I worked and where I lived, and for the most part I've been able to walk, ride the bus or train, or drive no more than 6-7 miles to work, and usually much less. I know that is the case for most of my neighbors, and it has been true in the neighborhoods I've lived in in the past. So I know it's not mandatory to live a long way from work.

Yet where I work now (Perimeter), we have people commuting from Dahlonega, Zebulon, Peachtree City, Watkinsville, Acworth, Lake Spivey, Winder, Conyers, Grayson, and Lithia Springs. Some of those places must be nearly 50 miles away! One of my good friends live in Kennesaw and another lives in Stone Mountain. Everyone drives in alone, every day. They all drive nearly an hour each way, and some of them spend a lot more time than that in their cars. I've often heard people say it took them nearly 2 hours to get to work. What's the utility of choosing to work that far from home? Or to live that far from their jobs? I can't help but think that these gigantic commutes must have a bearing on the speeding and other aggressive driving behavior we see in Atlanta.

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Actually, it has been proven through multiple studies that those that obey the antiquated, out-dated speed limits of our nations highways are the ones that are truly endangering their fellow driver.

The slow drivers are the ones that cause accidents, time and time again. If people would do their research, they would know this.

Derrick, that's interesting. Are you saying that research proves it's more unsafe when everyone obeys the speed limit and drives 55?

Or is it simply that when you've got a bunch of other people tearing along at illegal speeds, they are more likely to collide with people going the speed limit? As I mentioned earlier, that's like saying if somebody gets shot by a criminal, it's their fault for getting in front of the bullet.